Businesses provide garments and other supplies to their workers for a number of reasons. Such garments may include uniforms that are utilized to identify the worker as an employee of the company. Restaurant workers, delivery personnel and auto mechanics are a few examples of the types of employees who may be seen in uniform. The use of uniforms for employees may also contribute to the brand image of the employer by helping to present a consistent impression to the public through its employees.
Specific types of garments may also be provided in specialized circumstances. In food preparation and processing settings, an employer may provide specific guidelines for use and also for cleansing or laundering of a garment. In some cases, regulations and laws may set certain minimum guidelines as well. Clean room settings (such as for production of microelectronics) also require specialized garments in order to prevent contaminants from being introduced into the clean room setting.
The uniforms and other garments are often obtained by businesses as part of a program from a garment provider which in turn may also provide laundering and optionally sanitizing and other services. In such an arrangement, the business customer may specify to the garment provider the number and type of garments, pick up dates, turn around times and other parameters for service. The garment provider then delivers the garments to the customer for use by employees, picks up the soiled garments, processes the garments (e.g. launders them) and then returns the garments to the customer's location. Garment providers may provide for laundering and processing of items in addition to clothing and uniforms, including shop towels (such as used in a car repair facility) and floor mats (such as found in entryways and hallways) as well as other items that require laundering or processing. It should be understood that the use of the term “garment” as used is therefore non-limiting and therefore may, in proper context, be understood to include clothing such as uniform as well as towel, mats and other items that can be laundered or otherwise processed in the garment provider's facilities for the customer.
Costs in such a program are based on a number of factors including, but not limited to, the number of garments in the program, the service volume for such garments, the level of service for garments, charges for enhanced or proprietary treatment of serviced garments, charges for lost or damaged garments, and charges for new wearers entering the program. The customer wants to receive invoices that are accurate and fair and to know that what is billed has been performed to their expectations and that the service has good competitive value. Obviously, customers want to have control over how much is spent on such a program. Customers prefer billing without spikes and dislike non-productive charges i.e. loss or damage. They are also receptive towards measures to reduce non-productive cost events.
One classic dispute between a garment provider and a customer arises when a garment or other item is reported missing, whether the absence is discovered by the customer or reported to the customer by the garment provider. The dispute is whether the item has been lost within the customer's organization or during servicing by the garment provider. Service contracts usually allocate the replacement cost of the garment to whoever lost the garment. Another dispute arises when a garment is damaged and whether the damage arose from use in the customer's facility or during processing within the hands of the garment provider. These disputes can best be resolved when there is information on the location of the garment and its condition that is available to both sides allowing them to reach an agreement on the facts. However, the facts are often unavailable or obscured by a lack of records on what has been delivered, what was turned in at the customer's site, how it is used, and the condition of the garment.
The customer wants the garment provider to be responsive when exceptions or disputes arise. This means that they want agreement on the facts of the exception (e.g. damage or loss), agreement on actions with short time to correct, and visibility into the correction process i.e. tracking garments in the system. A system that would allow the customer to be able to trust the garment provider and its performance would reduce the time needed to administer the program.
Generally, industrial laundry garments are handled in random bundles when they are soiled (used and to be returned to the industrial laundry plant for cleaning). These bundles are most often managed in bulk since dealing with the garments on an individual basis is very labor intensive. After arriving at the plant the laundry is typically separated in types dependent of what should be washed together. Some separation of different delivery routes and accounts may occur too from sequential unloading of the route trucks, and by design, to separate route lots in the laundry process. Garments are normally manually separated, arranged on hangers, and hung onto a rack or conveyor system after completing the drying process.
Complete manual identification of each garment at the soil entry is normally cost prohibitive. Therefore, garment provider processes currently include identifiers on garments for manual and automatic tracking. These identifiers include human readable text and barcode information. The information on these labels is used by garment providers for automatic processing and for manual reading where automation has not been implemented. It is also understood that HF RFID tags have been tested in some industrial laundry plants.
However, these approaches result in unacceptable labor costs. For barcode implementations, readers require line of sight between reader and the identifier. For HF RFID tags, tend to require special machines to be used to separate garments in front of the reader due to their limited capability to quickly read many tags in front of the reader at the same time. It also may require manual labor to feed the separation machine.
A system that would give a garment provider the ability to automatically scan and track garments without line of sight to the label and even the ability to identify individual garments within bundles of clean or soiled garments would allow garment providers to achieve greater processing efficiencies and implement reporting and tracking protocols to provide customers with important data regarding garments in their program with a higher level of confidence in the data than can currently be achieved.